Footfall Vibration and

Finite Element Analysis

Peter Debney, Oasys, Leeds, United Kingdom
Michael Willford, Arup, San Francisco, California
With more efficient design utilizing stronger materials leading
to lighter structures, the problem of human-induced vibrations
on floors is increasing. Conventional methods of predicting
floor accelerations are only suitable for a narrow range of floor
layouts and materials. Originally developed for internal use in
Arup, Oasys GSA is a structural analysis program commercially
available to other consultants. One of the most popular features
added within the past five years is the ability to calculate the
vibrations caused by footfall and other human activities on any
type of structure, including floors, bridges and stadia.
The possibility of human footfall loading leading to excessive
vibration of structures has long been recognized. In 1831, soldiers
marching across a cast iron bridge generated vibrations that caused
the bridge to collapse, thus the reason why some bridges now display notices instructing soldiers to break step when crossing (see
Figure 1). There have been other collapses of floors and stadium
structures induced by crowds dancing or jumping in unison.
The introduction of lightweight, long-span, composite construction and open-plan offices in North America in the 1960s led to
concerns that normal walking caused uncomfortable vibrations
for occupants of the buildings. Until this time, serviceability was
checked using only simple stiffness-based criteria, such as limiting
imposed-load deflections to a ratio of the span or ensuring that the
natural frequency was higher than a certain limit.

Market Drivers
There are now numerous market forces causing clients to insist
on floor vibration checks:
Design codes AISC and IBC recommend that floor vibrations
be checked.
Commercial on lively floors, computer users complain because
their screens wobble, making it difficult to work.
Bridges need to comply with bridge codes.
Laboratories equipment, such as optical and electron microscopes and laser research systems, are very sensitive to vibrations. Floors for such equipment floors must comply with the
BBN or ASHRAE standards.
Hospitals operating theaters require the utmost stability for
delicate operations, and the latest scanning technologies require
even lower vibration levels.
Airports Airport owners are concerned that floor vibrations in
heavily trafficked waiting areas can upset seated travelers.
Retail many major retailers require assurance that vibrations
on display floors, such as a display of glasses on glass shelves,
will not be excessive. If the floor is too lively, then the glasses
will rattle

Vibration Problem
For many years, serviceability requirements have been a part of
structural design. Initially, these were just deflection limits to prevent finishes from cracking and building occupants noticing floors
sagging. These proved adequate for decades, until advances began
to be made into more efficient, lighter structures, such as composite
beam or post-tensioned slab floors, and open-plan rather than cellular offices became more common. Unfortunately, users of some of
these buildings found that the floors could be rather lively.
The first proposed remedy to this problem was to restrict the
natural frequency of the floor beams, since it was thought that if this
were kept above walking pace, then resonance should not occur.
For simple floor layouts, the fact that this frequency could be found
by a simple hand calculation encouraged this approach.
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Figure 1. Albert Bridge, London.

However, a number of problems emerged with this solution.

The first was that floors can be excited into resonance at higher
harmonics of a pedestrians footstep frequency. The second was
that while shorter spans had higher natural frequencies, they also
had lower mass, making them easier to excite. This, combined with
the modern trend for irregular floor bays, open plan offices and
electronic storage rather than filing cabinets (reducing the mass
and damping of floors) made the vibration problem more difficult
to assess and solve.
Floor vibration problems are not restricted to steel/composite
floors. While most reinforced concrete floors, such as shown in
Figure 2, are adequate for office and residential use, vibration must
still be checked for more sensitive occupancies such as laboratories. Post-tensioned slabs, such as shown in Figure 3, are thinner
and lighter than those of conventional reinforced concrete, and
are thus more susceptible. Therefore, what the industry needed
was a reliable design method for all construction forms, materials
and framing layouts.

Industry Solutions
Industry experts recognized that floor frequency was not the
crucial issue, but how much the floor responds to the footsteps
of a person walking over it a footfall response calculation. Various trade organizations, such as the American Institute of Steel
Construction (AISC),1 the Steel Construction Institute (SCI),2 and
the Concrete Society3 have produced guides to assist engineers in
predicting this floor response.
Measuring the Vibration Problem. Human comfort is often the
key design objective for footfall-induced vibration, but in research,
medical, microelectronics and other vibration-sensitive occupancies, vibration may need to be restricted to levels well below the
threshold of human perception.
Response Factors for Humans. Setting simple criteria for human acceptance, such as shown in Figure 4, is complicated by the
fact that human tolerance of vibration varies with the direction,
frequency and duration of vibration. To account for direction
and frequency dependencies, the response factor R is defined as
a multiplier of the level of vibration, at the average threshold of
human perception, in the direction of concern at any frequency.
Therefore, a response factor of 1 represents the magnitude of vibration that is just perceptible by a typical human, while a response
SOUND & VIBRATION/NOVEMBER 2009

11

Figure 2. Eight-meter bay, reinforced concrete flat slab.

Figure 5. Floor vibrations due to human activity; example from AISC.

or equipment-specific) apply.
Regular and Irregular Structural Layouts. The difficulty with
some floor vibration guidelines is that they offer procedures only
for regular rectangular floor layouts. While this simplicity enables
calculations to be carried out by hand, many modern buildings
do not have simple and uniform floor bays. While some software
suppliers have suggested that irregular frames cannot experience
resonant problems, this is not the case in practice. This is supported by an example in the AISC design guide (shown in Figure
5) where unacceptable walking vibrations occur throughout most
of the floor, particularly adjacent to the atrium.
In fact, floors with irregular bays can be livelier than regular
ones, because susceptible vibration modes are sometimes localized to small areas. This means that the modes have low modal
mass and can be more easily excited to high acceleration responses
under footfalls. This can be predicted with GSA Footfall as shown
in Figure 6.
If we then add the posts under the atrium beams using staged
analysis, the floor in this area does improve. But there is some
knock-on effect to adjacent bays (see Figure 7).

Figure 3. Eight-meter bay, post tensioned slab.

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Figure 4. Building vibration z-axis curves for acceleration (RMS baseline,

peak criteria) after AISC.

factor of 2 is twice that, and a response factor of 8 is eight times

that. In this way, each of the colored lines in Figure 4 represents
the vibration level corresponding to a particular response factor.2
For sensitive equipment, different types of criteria (BBN, ASHRAE,
12

SOUND & VIBRATION/NOVEMBER 2009

The ideal methodology for assessing the susceptibility of a

structure to footfall vibration would be:
Applicable to as many structural forms as possible, whether
simple or complex.
Straightforward to use, enabling the consequences of various
design iterations to be readily and quickly assessed.
Applicable to structures whose structural properties may be
ascertained by: hand calculation undertaken early in the design
(or to verify more complex analyses); finite-element analysis;
and measurement.
Most existing methods rely heavily on rules that classify different structural forms, thus the details of the analysis to be used.
If the structure does not readily fit into one of these classifications,
then approximations must be made. If the underlying assumptions
for the basis of these empirical rules are not fully understood, then
the assumptions made are likely to be inaccurate.
A new set of methods was developed by Arup in the 1990s and is
based on extensive fundamental research into the nature of footfall
forces and the manner in which structures respond to them. In the
past 10 years, these methods have been very extensively validated
against measurements on completed structures and have been adopted in several of the most recent industry design guides.2,3
The research confirmed that when the walking frequency (or a
multiple of it) coincides with a natural frequency of the floor, then
vibrations will build up in a resonant manner. Resonant vibrations
tend to dominate on low-frequency floors (<10 Hz), when modal
frequencies fall below four times the footfall rate (resonance to the
first four harmonics of the footfall force).
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Figure 8. Finite element analysis of irregular floor frame.

Figure 6. Floor response before remedial work.

Figure 9. Response factor vs. walking frequency.

Figure 7. Floor response after addition of new posts.

On higher-frequency floors (>10 Hz), vibration induced by each

footstep tends to decay substantially before the next footstep
occurs, and transient vibrations due to each individual footstep
dominate the response.

GSA Footfall
For many years, GSA has been one of the leading PC-based
packages for structural analysis. Developed by Arup to meet its
own demanding and diverse requirements as one of the worlds
leading firms of international consulting engineers, GSAs capabilities are proven on thousands of complex and prestigious projects
worldwide.4,5
GSA Footfalls analyzes structures using extensively validated
Arup methods. Appropriate dynamic loading functions for walking
and other human activities as recommended by Arup research and
the American Institute of Steel Construction (AISC) are automatically available, including forces for use with stairs.
A properly conducted finite-element analysis (FEA) is the only
reliable way to predict the footfall response of any floor that is
not part of a regular rectangular frame (see Figure 8). Even with a
regular frame, FEA is often quicker than using hand calculations.
Using GSA, you get quick and accurate predictions of floors resonant and transient response to footfall forces, including response
factors, peak and RMS accelerations and velocities.
GSA analysis enables you to locate regions of high and low rewww.SandV.com

Figure 10. Composite frame.

sponse to determine sensible locations for sensitive equipment or

activities. It also allows you to assess quickly the cost effectiveness
of localized modifications to floor structures to meet the design
criteria for humans or sensitive equipment. Also, because GSA is
based on the first principles of structural dynamics, not empirical
formulae to specific layouts, you can calculate the footfall response
of any floor, bridge or other structure constructed of steel, composite, reinforced, pre- or post-tensioned concrete or timber.
Because you can define exactly where to examine a model, you
can check particular areas, such as the effect of running down a
corridor next to an operating theatre. You can also examine the
SOUND & VIBRATION/NOVEMBER 2009

13

Figure 13. Footfall vibration response contours.

Figure 11 Mode 1 of composite frame.

and maximum walking frequencies (footfall rates); detailed chart

views of results; and contour plots of vibration levels on floor.
Other Vibration Analyses: harmonic analysis; response spectrum; linear time history; and periodic excitation (see Figure 9).

Step-by-Step Guide
1. Sub-Frame Model Create a model of the floor in question using
beams and/or shells as shown in Figure 10.
2. Modal Analysis Run a modal analysis to find the modes up
to the limit specified in the relevant design guide. These are
typically 10 Hz, 15 Hz or twice the fundamental frequency (see
Figures 11 and 12).
3. Footfall Analysis Run a footfall response analysis as shown in
Figure 13. Options include selection of harmonic or impulsive
forces, the area of excitation, footfall rates and damping.

Summary

resonance of a structure to vibrating machinery and dance loads

using harmonic analysis, define your own dynamic load factors,
or conduct a linear response analysis.

GSA Footfalls is for structural engineers who need to predict

reliably the response of a structure to footfall-induced loading. It
is a FEA program that provides the ability to analyze any structure for footfall response, whether steel or concrete, bridge, floor
or stair. Unlike other programs or manual methods, it gives you
the tools to assess your structure using the AISC, Concrete Centre
and SCI methods.

Dynamic Features of GSA

References

Modal Analysis: choice of eigenvalue analysis (modal, modal

P-delta, Ritz, Ritz P-delta); chose number of vibration modes and
start mode; include additional horizontal or vertical restraints;
specify mass or derive mass from applied loads and self weight;
and include stiffening effects of loads.
Footfall Analysis: check full model or selected areas; damping by
user input values, modal damping or table; vary number of footfalls
for resonant response; vary weight of walker; choice of excitation
force methods (Arup/Concrete-Centre, Steel Construction, American Institute of Steel Construction, floor or stair); adjust minimum

The authors can be reached at: peter.debney@arup.com, michael.willford@

arup.com.

Figure 12. Mode 2 of composite frame.

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SOUND & VIBRATION/NOVEMBER 2009

1. Murray, T. M., Allen, D. E., and Ungar, E. E., Floor Vibrations Due to
Human Activity, AISC, 2003.
2. Smith A. L., Hicks S. J., and Devine P. J., Design of Floors for Vibration:
A New Approach, Steel Construction Institute, 2007.
3. Willford, M. R., and Young, P,, A Design Guide for Footfall Induced
Vibration of Structures, The Concrete Centre, 2006.
4. Willford, M., Field, C., and Young, P., Improved Methodologies for the
Prediction of Footfall Induced Vibration, Architectural Engineering
National Conference, Omaha, NB, 2006.
5. www.oasys-software.com/GSA.

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